An English Teacher, An English Teacher, If Only I'd Been An English Teacher

The other night at ESL class, we were discussing some vocabulary when one of my students slipped out and returned with some paper towels, handed them to me, and started motioning to her face. I looked at her, and then down at my dry-erase-marker-dust-covered hands, and realized why my students had been fidgeting while I was obliviously going on about A Visit to the State Fair.

I made my best attempts to clean up, but she soon took the towel, grabbed my chin, and started rubbing my cheeks vigorously. The other students helpfully pointed out other smudges, while one ran to grab a mirror to show me the extent of my Pig-Pen-ness and another checked out the ingredients on the bottle of whiteboard cleaner to see if it was safe for skin.

Totally not embarrassing, because this was not a new experience. It reminded me of how I turn into the absent-minded professor (well, at least the klutzy-uncoordinated professor) every time I get enthusiastic about a topic. Whenever I get up in front of a classroom and try to use a writing tool, I get it allllll over myself. Student teaching? Overhead markers. Teaching college English? Chalk dust (oh, did I pay for my all-black wardrobe). ESL? Dry-erase marker dust.

A few days later, I received another email from a journal I admire asking me to do a book review for them. I've obviously not been in good touch, as it listed my current occupation as an instructor at the college where I used to teach.

And it got me thinking...about what might have been.

I was totally going to be a teacher, from my elementary days when I taught my poor brothers how to spell using discarded textbooks to my senior year when I applied to the Faculty of Education because, well, What Else? Student teaching in a junior high led to swift abandonment of public school ambitions, but I simply swapped out the classroom location from public school to ivory tower and headed myself over to the Faculty of Arts.

We planned our family around my Ph.D. It made perfect sense to have the munchkins between my M.A. and the Ph.D. as I would have more time to concentrate on my career once they were toddlers. (Ah yes, the sweet and dense fog that is the understanding of childless people about Life After Babies.)

If you would have asked me five years ago where I would be today, I would have said without hesitation, "grad school." I'd be slogging through my dissertation, teaching intro English on the side, and madly trying to publish and present at conferences in the in-between-times.

Life looks very different from that today. Not a grad school application in sight. I haven't read a scholarly article in over a year. Heck, my literary intake has been stuck on the "All Prachett, All the Time" channel for some time now.

You know what, though? I'm okay with that. Sure, I'd like to be "Dr. Peitricia Mae." But having traded in the prepping until 2 a.m., circling a comma splice on a student paper for the umpteenth time, and feeling woefully unprepared every time I stepped in front of that chalkboard, I don't feel the pressure to return to school anytime soon. Plus, I'm still paying the student loans for my bachelor's degree.

Beyond that, I really, really like my job right now. It's certainly not where I thought I'd ever be. I don't fit the profile. When people find out what I do they say, "really? Um, that's great. Wow...that sounds...difficult." (Apparently I look like I would do something easy.)

Nevertheless, it's a great fit: in my current job there's still plenty of anal-retentive editing (with the bonus of no surly students on the other end), lots to learn without feeling like I'll never get a handle on all the information (ever tried teaching Shakespeare?), and above all it's 6:30-3:00 with only the extremely occasional late night.

Plus, I never use a whiteboard. So it's win-win for everyone!